


Brave and Beautiful

by devilinthedetails



Series: The Warm Heart of Winter [3]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, References to Suicide, Walk in the snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25110154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Shinko, Roald, and Lianokami on a winter morning.
Relationships: Roald II of Conté/Shinkokami of Conté
Series: The Warm Heart of Winter [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816405
Kudos: 10





	Brave and Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> I prefer "Lian" as a short form of Lianokami, so I chose to refer to Lianokami as Lian in this story rather than "Liano."

Brave and Beautiful 

Shinko’s breath frosted as she crunched across a snow-covered palace path that had the small footprints marking her daughter’s passage a moment before hers. Last night, flakes of white snow had fallen from the dark sky, and, for the first time this year, the ground had been cold enough so the snow accumulated as a blanket upon it rather than melting against its insulating warmth. 

Lian, upon waking to discover this surviving snowfall, had begged to go outside and build a miniature castle in the snow. That was why she and Roald were taking their daughter down to the gardens where she could fulfill her architectural dream. 

Shinko had managed to delay this grand design and ambition long enough to compel her daughter into a cloak that now flapped in the wind behind her daughter’s fleet feet and gloves. 

As they came to an open spot, Lian seemed to decide this was the perfect location for erecting her castle for she stopped running and knelt in the snow to begin her building project. The movement dislodged her hood, and Shinko lifted it over her daughter’s head again, warning with a light tug on Lian’s ear, “There’s a chill in the air. Keep your hood up or your ears will get frostbite, and Duke Baird will have to amputate them.” 

“Yes, Ma.” Lian offered this dutiful, rote answer in a tone that suggested she was more concerned with rolling snowballs to construct her castle’s foundation than she was worried about her mother’s injunction. 

Were all daughters so quick to disregard the caution of their mothers? Shinko wondered as she joined Roald on the stone bench he had brushed clear of snow for their use. She had no idea. Her own mother had been ordered to commit suicide before she could begin to bristle at any instructions or warnings from her mother. 

She felt lost as if in a blinding blizzard, and, as she so often did when she felt lost, she confided her uncertainty to Roald. Sighing into the gray and heavy December sky, she commented, “Lian must think me an overbearing, overprotective dragon mother.” 

“All children believe their mothers are overbearing, overprotective dragon mothers.” Roald reached out to wrap his gloved fingers around hers. “That they believe that is only proof of how much their mothers love them.” 

“My mother couldn’t protect me after she was ordered to commit suicide, and she couldn’t be overbearing after she was dead.” Shinko felt tears flare in her eyes and blamed them on the second child she carried with her everywhere who had started to kick and punch at the walls of her womb as if eager to escape into the wider, icier world. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to be a mother as a result.” 

“I couldn’t ask for a better mother to my children.” Roald’s fingers squeezed around hers in gentle reassurance. 

Shinko felt her cheeks flush scarlet as holly berries. Glancing around the garden for a distraction from her embarrassment, her gaze was caught by a flicker of red against the bare brown branch of a tree and realized that a robin was singing in its nest. 

“Isn’t it brave and beautiful how robins are one of the few birds to sing in winter?” Shinko leaned closer to her husband’s heat, her hooded cheek pressing against his cloaked shoulder. 

“Necessity might have more to do with it than bravery and beauty, my dear.” Roald tilted his head to smile at her. “Robins sing to defend their territory from any challengers.” 

“Something can be born from necessity but still be brave and beautiful.” Shinko thought of their marriage as she spoke. It had been born of necessity—of the demand for a wedding to symbolize and seal the treaty between Tortall and the Yamani Islands—but it had become brave and beautiful. 

“So it can,” agreed Roald, and Shinko had the warm, pleasant sense that she wasn’t alone in thinking of their marriage. She felt united in thought and feeling with her husband on this gray winter morning.


End file.
